Pavel Shabley

The paper discusses the biography of Abdulhabir al-Muslimi, a student of Sh. Mardjani. The rich accounts of his life and activities allow us to study the features of the mobility of Muslims in the Russian Empire and beyond, the main trends in the development of theological and intellectual tradition, the new approaches to reform the Muslim education system. Since al-Muslimi had progressive ideas that outlined the range of urgent issues of Muslim society in the second half of the 19th century, some scholars call him the forerunner of Jadidism. How fair is this assessment? Does it take into consideration the complexity of Jadid discourse itself and the problems that remained beyond the concepts of "modernity", "reform"? In order to answer this question, I analyze some of Abdulhabir's works and the specifics of historical space in which he operated. The most valuable source in this regard is the correspondence of Sh. Mardjani with his student.

The paper examines the peculiarities of the legal culture of Inner Kazakh Horde Muslims at the beginning of the 20th century. The key problem is criteria for legality of fatwas. Despite the fact that the control over the issue of fatwas was the prerogative of the Mufti of the Orenburg Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly (OMDS = Muftiyat), in the regions of the Russian Empire there was a great variety in the implementation of this legal practice. In a number of cases, the ulema spread their own fatwas, ignoring the influence of the Muftiyat. One of these stories occurred in the Talovsky part of the Inner Horde, when the local akhun (akhund) Gumar Karash issued five fatwas. Part of the Kazakh society, including ukaznoy mullahs, took such actions as a challenge to their own authority. Pursuing personal interests, influential Kazakhs appealed to the UMDS with a request to check whether the legal opinions of Karash correspond to the Sharia. The position of the OMDS was determined by qadi Ginayatullah Kapkaev. According to his decision, one of the fatwas of the Kazakh akhun did not conform to the doctrinal principles of the Hanafi madh-hab. Analyzing this story, I come to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the indication of the illegality of fatwas was an instrument of power and manipulation among the local Kazakhs; on the other hand, the clashes between the akhun and the OMDS indicate the existence of different approaches to understanding of the legal situation. In other words, disagreements arose on the basis of how to measure the doctrinal requirements of Hanafism with regional characteristics. Being unable to challenge the credibility of the legal sources of Karash, the OMDS accused Kazakh akhun of departing from the Maturidi ' aqida and of Mu'tazili propaganda. The paper is mainly based on archival materials. In addition, Arabic-script sources published in the Muslim periodicals and books in Kazakh and Tatar of the early twentieth century are used.